Paul was born around 880 in Elea (the ancient city of Pergamum) in Byzantine western Asia Minor to a Greek Byzantine military family — his father a thematic-army officer killed in Saracen-frontier warfare during Paul's childhood.
After the death of his mother during his youth, he and his elder brother Basil entered the monastery of the Most Pure Virgin on Mount Latros in Byzantine Caria (the mountain known in antiquity as Mount Latmos, in modern southwestern Turkey).
After years of cenobitic monastic life, Paul withdrew to a cave-hermitage on the rocky slopes of Mount Latros, living as a solitary anchorite for decades in extreme ascetic discipline.
When disciples began seeking him out, Paul founded the Stylos Monastery (the 'Pillar Monastery', named for his stylite-influenced ascetic discipline) on the Mount Latros — becoming the principal monastic centre of the mountain.
Mount Latros under Paul's leadership and his immediate successors became (alongside Mount Olympus in Bithynia, Mount Auxentius near Constantinople, and the soon-to-be-founded Mount Athos) one of the principal Byzantine monastic-hermit mountains of the 10th–11th centuries.
Paul died at the Stylos Monastery on December 15, 955. The Mount Latros monastic tradition continued through the two centuries until the 13th-century Turkish conquest of southwestern Asia Minor produced the abandonment of the mountain — the ruined monasteries survive today in the dramatic rocky landscape of the Beşparmak Dağları national park.